Monday Recap: A Seasonal Shift

Our recent hard freeze has certainly changed the harvests coming in from the garden. The summer veggies are all gone, and replacing them are things that can take a bit of cold. Like daikon radishes, for instance. I brought a few in last week for salads and perhaps a stir fry. They also keep well in the refrigerator crisper drawer. I’ve really come to appreciate these giants of the radish family.

daikon radishes

Carrots also came in from the cold last week. The variety in the below photo is Cordoba, which gets about 6-7″ long and does well in heavier soils. The tops of these were dinner for the local deer one night. At least they left the bottoms for us! Some went into a side dish along with potatoes and cabbage, and the rest went into soup.

Cordoba carrots

My wife and I have been fighting a cold bug for a few days now. With that in mind, and with the colder weather, soup has been on the menu several times lately. Last week I made two soups, one a mushroom soup and the other vegetable soup. The mushroom and barley soup used mostly store-bought things like fresh and dried mushrooms, but did use some fresh chives and sage I got from the herb garden plus a little sliced garlic. The recipe called for sour cream but I thought the soup had plenty of flavor without it so I left it out.

Mushroom Barley Soup

The vegetable soup had lots of goodies from our garden though, including some of my frozen soup mix (containing cabbage, zucchini and green beans) plus frozen tomatoes and potatoes from storage. I also used a couple of the Cordoba carrots, plus some Jacob’s Cattle beans I had cooked up from last year’s harvest. I can see more soup in my future this week as the Polar Vortex comes to visit us.

vegetable soup with Jacob’s Cattle beans

And for me, vegetable soup calls for some good crusty homemade bread. I wasn’t too sick to whip up a batch of my 1-2-3 Sourdough Bread. I’m still getting the hang of this recipe though. Last time I baked a loaf I had a minor blowout because I didn’t slash the dough deeply enough before baking. So, this time I thought I had done a better job, but the bread still had a major blowout in the middle! I need to remind myself, once again, this bread gets a tremendous oven spring, and needs to be deeply scored before baking. It was totally edible however, and made a great accompaniment to the vegetable soup.

1-2-3 Sourdough Bread

Before my head stopped up, and while I still had my full sense of taste and smell, I baked up one of the Thai Rai Kaw Tok winter squash. I cut some of it into wedges, then tossed it with a little olive oil and salt and roasted until tender. The rest I left in bigger chunks and baked without seasoning. This squash had a rich, full, and somewhat spicy flavor, with a nicely dense flesh. It cooked up to a deep orange color too. The skin was also tender enough to eat, much like a Delicata skin. This one is definitely a keeper.

cooked slices of Rai Kaw Tok squash

I pureed the bigger pieces, and used some of the puree to whip up a batch of Maple Pumpkin Custard. The rich flavor and orange color really came through in the custard. I can see some of this winding up in a pumpkin pie before long. A curried squash soup also sounds good to me.

Maple Pumpkin Custard made with Thai squash

About three weeks ago I started some seeds for spinach, lettuce and an Asian green called mizspoona. I got them transplanted last week, and I’ll let them grow a bit before setting out. Some of them are destined for a cold frame bed, and the rest will go in the greenhouse beds. You can already see some red in the leaves of the Red Sails lettuce in the below photo.

Red Sails lettuce seedling

I also need to sow a little bit of arugula, mizuna and komatsuna for late winter/early spring greens. They won’t do much growing in the cold winter greenhouse or cold frame now, but they will take off in February when the days start getting longer again and give us some early greens while we wait for spring to officially arrive. And speaking of the greenhouse, I still have one cucumber hanging on. I didn’t have much hopes of it making an edible cuke, but it is surprising me. I know I could eat one more homegrown cucumber regardless of the size, so I will let it go a bit longer. I don’t need the space yet anyway, at least not until the winter seedlings are a bit bigger.

young Tasty Jade cucumber in greenhouse

That’s a look at what’s going on around here in early November. To see what others are harvesting and cooking from the garden, visit Daphne’s Dandelions where Daphne hosts Harvest Mondays. And as always, thanks to Daphne for hosting this event every Monday!

Love both of your soups and I have most of the ingredients on hand this is going to be a soup week, thanks for the incentive. glad you posted info about the Rai Kaw Tok squash I am going to love it. Looking for it in the food market.
Hope you and your wife are feeling better now.

Those daikon radishes are huge, which of course is no surprise I suppose. I would love to try them but I figure I had better learn how to grow a good crop of regular radishes first. For such an easy vegetable, I always seem to have such a hard time with them!

I hope that you and your wife will get over the cold soon! I have been wondering whether your vegetable garden is fenced in when I read your previous entries from 2011 to 2012. It did not appear to be from the photos of your garden. It is still pretty amazing that the damages by deer is pretty light. We fenced in our garden with bird netting secured with posts. So far, the netting was good at keeping deer away but it was not effective with woodchucks.

We had plastic mesh deer fencing around the garden originally. It kept the deer out, but rabbits were always chewing it and getting in the garden. The deer would eat everything if they could get to the garden!

It looks like a good week for you in spite of colds and cold weather. It is amazing how cucumbers can just keep chugging along, that one looks amazing considering how it must be even in the greenhouse. Feel better soon!

So you sow greens in the greenhouse now and they come up in the spring? Are they just slow or do they go dormant in the cold? I finally have a proper greenhouse and just trying to figure out how to make it productive (I’m in Ontario – a 4b zone so much colder though). All your dishes look AWESOME – especially that custard. I love the colour of that squash!

Snow and ice buildup at the door can be a problem for sure. It is amazing how many things survive in the unheated greenhouse though. I also have kale and chard out there, and they usually make it through the winter too.

All the dishes look delicious! I really enjoy squash roasted up that way. My Thai Rai Kaw Toks look like they’re going to mature and store nicely so I’ve not gotten to sample one yet as I have other varieties that don’t look to be storing quite as well…some sad looking Cushaws!